


Golden

by ac_123



Series: It's You I Find (Like a Ghost in My Mind) [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 18:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9397205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ac_123/pseuds/ac_123
Summary: Shiro just wants the freedom to love his boyfriend without anyone or anything interfering.~~~A sequel toLast Night On Earth.  Cribs a couple of ideas off of it, but probably isn't necessary to read.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Voltron Season 2 Day everyone! Season 2 hasn't even made it to Netflix when I'm posting this, but I'm so pumped ya'll. I hope it doesn't break all our hearts (psych, I totally do).
> 
> But, yeah, I was so excited and humbled and blown away by how much people enjoyed Last Night On Earth that I went ahead and wrote a sequel. Thank you all so much for reading my weird little Shance fic and leaving so many kind comments and reaching out to me about the fic. If you ever want to talk about Voltron or Shance or life, you can find me on tumblr as [ballpointpencil](http://ballpointpencil.tumblr.com) or you can find me on Twitter @ac_123.

“What do you think about the beach?” Lance asked.

“I like it,” Shiro said. He rested his temple on Lance’s, looking down on the brochures in his lap. Bright, glossy pictures of red plateaus, smiling hikers, brilliant carnivals, screaming families on roller coasters, and massive evergreens were tucked between Lance’s knees and lay across his thighs. The one in his hands featured bronze men and women relaxing on a golden sandy beach. On the opposite page was a man parasailing and underneath him was a couple, a blond woman with large sunglasses and her paramour, drinking champagne as the sun set behind them. “There aren’t any nearby, though. I think the closest is eight hours away.”

Lance sighed despondently. He tucked himself further under Shiro’s arm. “Yeah.”

“We can go on that hiking retreat in the Painted Desert,” he suggested. “Three days, two nights out in the wilderness. Completely secluded.” He glanced at Lance’s pout. “Or,” he continued, “we could go to that theme park up north. The weather’s great up there this time of year. We shouldn’t get any rain or clouds, and it’ll only be a couple hours’ drive.”

Lance smiled dimly. “I haven’t been to an amusement park since I was a kid.”

Shiro crossed his legs and shifted up on the love seat. “My parents used to take me to Disneyland after school let out in the summer. My mom said it was a gift for doing so well. I think my dad just wanted to ride Splash Mountain.”

Lance chuckled. He twisted around to look directly into Shiro’s eyes. His pout perked up into a sharp-toothed, mischievous smile. “You could say that it’s a small world af—”

“No.”

Lance’s expression flatlined with disappointment. He turned back around and picked up the amusement park brochure. “We went to Disney World,” he said. “Me, my parents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Even abuela would walk all the way through Epcot with the rest of us.”

There was a little smile, barely more than a quirk in the corner of his mouth, as he spoke. It stuck around even as his focus fell away from group shots of awe-filled children. Shiro followed his eyeline, now returned to beach pictures in his other hand.

Shiro rolled his shoulders, adjusting his left arm to fully enclose around his boyfriend. “You miss them, huh?”

Lance nodded. “It’s weird. I didn’t think I would as much as I do.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” Lance leaned his head back and watched the ceiling as he said, “I had my heart set on joining the Garrison after high school. I worked hard to keep my grades up, trained every day. I even tried calling Cape Canaveral to talk to someone who had graduated.”

“Did it work?” Shiro asked. He pet Lance’s bicep with the side of his thumb. His right hand twitched on the far side of the couch.

Lance glanced at him. “No,” he said. “And Mami nearly pulled my ear off when she saw the phone bill the next month.”

Shiro laughed. He could almost see it: a skinnier version of Lance squirming away from his squat, apple-cheeked mother as she reached up to grab his ear and demand why the phone bill was showing an international call to Florida.

“Stop it,” Lance said with a pout. “You don’t know how scary Mami can be, especially when it comes to bills.”

Shiro coughed to stifle his laughter. His stomach cramped as he forced himself to stop. Still, his smile stuck around, as did the image, now mutated to one where Lance reverently bowed to his mother with hands clasped in supplication. “I believe you,” he said jovially. “My dad was just as strict with money.” He laid his forehead on the side of Lance’s head. “You were saying about missing home?”

“Yeah,” Lance said. “I just didn’t think how different it would be out here. How…far it was. Then I came out and there wasn’t an ocean to visit or family to talk to or even people who spoke the same kind of Spanish as me. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you and Hunk.”

Shiro maneuvered his left arm to move down Lance’s back and hook it around his waist. He pulled him closer, their sides pressed tightly together, and kissed him. “I’m happy I could be a highlight.”

Lance’s expression was soft, his smile thoughtless and bright. It threw golden light on his cheekbones and made his eyes shine like the stars he had plotted as a kid. “Shiro,” he said, “you’re so much more than a highlight. You, this, our relationship, it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Shiro could feel his entire body grow hot, like a fire had spontaneously lit inside of him. A sharp spike tore through his lungs. Every breath drove it further in with the pain endlessly echoing through him.

“We don’t have to go anywhere,” Lance said, looking at the brochures. “We get shore leave no matter if we stay or if we leave the campus. For all I care we can stay in your room for three days and just…I don’t know…enjoy each other’s company without distractions.”

The pain in his chest resonated with the cramps in his stomach and he doubled over. Nausea moved through him, swimming through his veins to reach every inch of him and changing along the way: in his head it was hot vertigo, in his arms it was paralysis, and in his legs it was the persistent pain of ten thousand hammering needles crawling their way up his skin.

“As long as I’m with you,” Lance continued. His voice sounded like it was fading away — a recording of an echo played at the end of a long hallway.

“Lance,” Shiro gritted out. The name, once so sweet and kind to him, felt like sandpaper lashing his tongue.

Lance said, “I love you, Shiro” right as the floor darkened from a dull steel gray to a purple so dark it was nearly black. Flourescent lights were now as bright as flood lamps, shining directly down on him. He tried to move his arms and legs, but they were tied down to a metal table. He could hear bustling and movement, perhaps a dozen or more people were moving just out of sight above his head, and an ever-present hum like an electric engine.

Shiro closed his eyes and rocked his head away from the lights. He jostled and tried to kick. He strained his arms against their bindings and found that his left arm was more firmly secured than his right. “Where—”

“It’s awake!” someone hissed.

“Its memory wasn’t strong enough,” someone else said.

He rolled his head to the right. It wasn’t tied down beyond the shoulder. His left was tied at the elbow and the wrist as well. So why—

“Put it back to sleep!”

Shiro’s stomach bottomed out. His arm. He still had his bicep, but everything below that. His elbow and wrist. His hand. All that was left was a jut of creamy bone stained pink and red with metal bolts screwed into the sides and thin red threads of shredded muscle or braided nerves.

He screamed. He thrashed his head and legs. He pulled at his restraints, tried to gain any leverage he could muster against the table. He hit something with his knee, followed by the sounds of fragile metal instruments clattering on the ground. Hands grabbed his chest: pale, frail fingers dug into his skin, leaving searing stings that felt like molten metal. The weight of three people and the pain of those hands kept his body still, but his head remained out of reach until another pair of hands grabbed it and forced it back. Above him was the witch with golden eyes.

“Hello, Champion,” she greeted, her voice a crackle of putrid sweetness.

“Let me go,” he demanded. He sneered, bore his teeth, and tried to surge against the weight.

“If I do that,” the monster teased, “then you won't be able to see your sweetheart.”

Shiro stopped thrashing. He thought he could feel a tear well in the corner of his eye, but the lights or his own resolve dried it up before it could fall. “Leave him alone,” he pleaded. “Don’t… Don’t bring him into this, please.”

The witch’s smile, venomous and cruel, slit across her face like a knife wound. Her eyes shone more brightly than the sun. His vision became those eyes: a sea of pale gold that flushed out the surgical theater, the doctors, the witch’s minions, and the witch herself. He was floating in nothing — empty and light and free to drift. A single command reverberated through the haze: sleep.

So he closed his eyes and let himself be swallowed by nothingness.

Then there was a weight on his chest. The bed underneath him squeaked as someone jumped on it. Hands grabbed his shoulders. “Wakey wakey!” Lance shouted.

Shiro cracked his eyes open. The hotel room was painted with the pale blues and purples of early morning light. Lance stared down at him from where he was straddling his chest, all goofy grin and electric eyes that were too peppy and awake for this hour. “It’s time to wake up, Shiro!” 

Shiro groaned and blinked. “What…” he muttered.

“The sun’s rising soon!” Lance shouted.

Shiro closed his eyes and tried to roll over. Lance pushed his shoulders to keep him on his back. “C’mon! We’re gonna watch the sun rise over the ocean!” Lance jumped off the bed and ran off to their luggage.

Shiro sat up and rubbed his eyes. “When did you get up?” he asked. He watched Lance dig through his suitcase. Board shorts and a white shirt went flying by his face. A flip-flop landed on his lap. Shiro picked it up, looked at it, and then tossed it over the side of the bed.

“I didn’t even sleep last night!” he exclaimed. Lance jumped back on the bed, now wearing boxer briefs and a tank top. “Shiro, get dressed, we’re gonna go on the beach and we’re gonna see the sun rise and we’re gonna—”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Shiro muttered. He pat Lance’s chest. “Let me get some clothes on.”

Lance scrambled off of the bed and ran to the window. Shiro rolled off the bed in the opposite direction, running his hands through his hair and continuing to blink the sleep out of his eyes. He picked out some clothes — a black t-shirt, some boxers, shorts that Lance said made his butt look good — and took a peek into the disaster that was Lance’s suitcase. Just one night in their room and he had already thrown half his belongings across the floor.

He ruminated on that as he stepped into his boxers. Their bedroom. Their floor in their bedroom. That they both had keys to and could come and go as they pleased. No one could stop them. No one would ask why they were spending so much time together, why they went to the same beach town at the same time. They didn’t need to ask their friends to play guard for them while they spent time together. They kissed in public when they went to dinner the night before and no one cared. They held hands when they picked up their room keys and the receptionist smiled and asked how long they had been together.

Freedom was intoxicating. Long ago he had envied the way his straight friends could hold their partners’ hands and not think twice about it. How they could talk about the people they dated and not feel compelled to play the pronoun game. He had had that kind of freedom for such a bittersweet moment of time years ago in the summer haze that followed his coming out. He found himself yearning for it again; feeling it as a tug in his chest, a tickle in his arms when his colleagues asked him about plans for the weekend. He always felt the truth — _I’m spending time with my boyfriend_ — grapple for purchase on his tongue before he swallowed it and said the easy lie, _Oh, I don’t have a lot going on this weekend._

“Shiro,” Lance said, “c’mon, you’re gonna miss it!”

The sunrise had already started to clean the air with a blinding cut of gold that split the room in two. Red clung to its edges, asking for mercy, while blues and purples were slowly and surely split and burned away. Shiro looked at Lance, whose attention had returned to the cresting sun. Its light weaved through him, catching the copper undertones in his hair, caressing the slope of his collar bone, highlighting the matte tawny shade of his skin.

Shiro crossed the room, his head full of static and a sense of this moment’s ephemeral nature. When he reached Lance, he laid a hand just beneath his neck and witnessed the sun’s shifting power cross his boyfriend’s face.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” he asked.

“Yeah,” he whispered, gaze following the lights dancing on Lance’s face. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

**Author's Note:**

> Edit 1/20/2017: I didn't add a rating when I posted this??? This fic is now rated T for Teen. Also changed a dialogue tag and the summary.


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